Big League Dreams

by Allen Hoffman

Book Overview

In Saint Louis, it is the summer of 1920 and the day is the Sabbath, but there is little rest for the Jews from Krimsk and less reverence for the wondrous Krimsker Rebbe, who led them to the New World seventeen years before. The rebbe's former hasidim have embraced America to discover that the vision of gold in the streets evokes larceny in the heart. Matti Sternweiss, the ungainly, studious child wonder in Krimsk, now the cerebral catcher for...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0789205831
• ISBN13: 9780789205834
• Release Date: February 1999
• Publisher: Abbeville Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.8" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

Connecting two worlds I care about

This book connects between two worlds I care for, the baseball world of my childhood and the Jewish world of America and Eastern Europe. This alone is enough for it to provide a certain enjoyment and insight.

Displays great writing while telling an absorbing story

Now that the Krimsker Jews we met in Small Worlds have emigrated to St. Louis, Hoffman can explore questions of what makes a people? How are a religion and its religious to adjust to new surroundings? The novel's invention and humanity are matched by Hoffman's great skill in the craft of writing. Scenes work so well, and his denoument is fitting and intriguing. I'll look for the third in this series.

Good sequel to Small Worlds

This is a well written sequel to Hoffman's first book. I found it interesting, but at times confusing. His reintroduction or reference to characters in Small Worlds are not always clear, especially if it has been some time since one read the first.